Several reports addressing various segments of the biometrics market have been released recently, starting with a ABI Research report that forecasts that 2016 will mark the global government ID market’s return to double-digit shipment growth since 2013.

The report, which is published as part of ABI’s Smart Card Technologies Service, finds that the market will be led by two eID projects set to commence this year in Japan and Bangladesh. Meanwhile, the 2015 to 2016 year-on-year market growth is on target to reach 13%.

ABI Research forecasts that the market will ship a total of 777 million units by 2020 worldwide. The report states that growth remained at a minimum (1-3%) over the past three years due to ongoing delays regarding several eID projects, most notably within Brazil, France and Russia.

The report also found that projects that industry officials once identified as next-generation growth drivers look increasingly unlikely to launch in the next five years.

Additionally, high-profile projects like India’s smart national ID card and the United States’ smart healthcare card managed to make significant moves over the past three to four years.

In terms of card interface choice, contact-based credentials are set to account for half of all shipments in 2020. This is the result of significant future contact-based national ID card deployments in Bangladesh and the Philippines, as well as a decrease in overall e-Passport growth.

The report states that unit shipments of fingerprint sensors were expected to have grown from $316 million in 2014 to $499 million in 2015 and will continue to increase each year to peak at $1.6 billion in 2020.

Apple continued to lead the fingerprint sensor market in 2015, due mainly to the popularity of iPhone 6S and iPad products.

Fingerprint Cards (FPC), with its growing customer base in China and in other regions, came from behind to tie second-ranked Samsung-supplier Synaptics in unit shipments in 2015. Despite this, FPC actually led Synaptics in 2015 revenues at $316 million.

The current market for fingerprint sensors is heavily dependent on capacitive sensors. However, led by Qualcomm, ultrasonic sensors are far more resistant to user impersonation are expected to enter the market soon.

TrendForce released a new report that projects that the facial recognition solutions market will grow from US$230 million in 2015 to an estimated US$450 million in 2019, which represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.97% in the 2015 to 2019 period.

The report identifies Asia Pacific as the main growth driver of the facial recognition market, which currently accounts for nearly 60% of the global market.

In the report, TrendForce analyst Christy Lin stated that facial recognition is harder to duplicate than fingerprints, is more likely to be more widely accepted by consumers and has a wider scope of applications.

The technology is expanding from its primary use within security and monitoring systems to other areas such as smart retail and mobile payment, the report said.